I wrote this on Tumblr when someone asked me if I had any hobbies. In the chain of reblogs, I came across this beautiful parable, from which I took this post’s title.
I have a garden that I love to work in every day. It’s one of my very few hobbies that are mostly private, that I keep for myself. I freely and enthusiastically share my love for classic arcade gaming, Tabletop and RPG games, and all my super nerd shit, so I like that I have this one thing that’s just for me, no expectations, no risk of getting dragged into The Discourse. It’s just for me and I love it.
During the lockdowns, I learned the difference between having a garden, and tending a garden. It turns out that I just love to tend my garden. I love to walk in it, smell all the smells, prune it and tie it up where it needs it, keep the soil healthy, and leave it alone when I’ve done enough. I love to listen to the birds, watch the bees and the butterflies, talk to the corvids, feed them the occasional grub or unwelcome insect. Watering is so lovely, carrying the can around and giving everything as close to just what it needs as I can. My coffee tastes better out there, too. It’s science.
In a lot of ways, I use my gardening time as a metaphor. One that was particularly meaningful to me lately came when I was pruning this feral tomato that showed up in one of my beds late last year. As a general rule, when I get any volunteers, I leave them alone, except to keep them away from things I’ve planted myself, as long as they aren’t invasive. I have more wildflowers around the yard than I can keep track of because of this policy, and I get a tomato or potato every other season or so in their respective beds. But in this case, this plant was growing so fast and getting so out of control, I had to rein it in a bit, with some pruning and gentle redirection of the parts which were tied to the trellis. If you can imagine Sideshow Bob’s hair as a tomato plant, you can sort of get the idea.
While I was tending it, I started thinking about the individual stalks as parts of my life experience: here’s one that doesn’t have anything growing on it, but if I follow it all the way to this point, I can see that it’s providing support and nutrients to this huge, thriving, massively flowering hunk of the plant over here. It turns out that that part may look like it isn’t doing anything, but without it, this other part that’s gorgeous wouldn’t exist.
I could have just looked at it and seen a stalk that wasn’t doing anything. I could have easily pruned it right then and there, because it was ugly, and only afterwards would I have discovered this lush, thriving, beautiful part of the plant that can’t exist without this other part. I was so grateful that I took the time to look at the whole thing, to see that bare stem in context, to appreciate it.
I don’t know if this particular metaphor lands on you, but it landed real hard on me. It inspired a wonderful moment of reflection and gratitude, and I also got excited for the … I mean, it’s at least a dozen, but maybe more … little cherry tomatoes I’m going to get when they finish ripening on this little bit of the vine. This plant is threatening to deliver pounds of fruit this season, and I just hope I can get there before the squirrels do.
Another thing about tending my garden is that it is, by design and necessity, slow. It rewards patience. It is entirely about the journey, even if the destination is pretty great on its own. I have recently noticed that, as long as I can remember, I have felt like I can’t slow down, like I can’t take time for myself, that I should always be working or trying to work. I’ve been working on healing as much of my CPTSD as I can, and part of that includes doing my best to give myself permission to slow down, to take entire days or even weeks off, because I was put to work when I was seven, and I have earned it. It’s such a struggle for me to give myself that grace.
And that’s where my garden is a metaphor again: it may not be full of blooming flowers or tons of vegetables right now, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t growing. Maybe it needs to be watered and fed today, and tomorrow, I can just walk through it, listen to the birds, watch the bees, notice new buds and leaves, choose to be grateful for the entire experience.
Your garden can be a metaphor, too, if you want.
Or not. I’m not the boss of you.
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I live in the land of perpetual winter, aka New England. My secret hobby is pouring over the seed catalogs that land in my mailbox sometime mid January and dreaming of the flowers that might like to live in my yard once the waist high snow melts. I like the metaphor – it hits close to home in so many ways. As does being able to slow down. I remember my first job as a teenager. Anytime anyone paused for a minute to take a break we were told by managers “No leaning, there’s always cleaning.” It wasn’t until years later that someone told me that being able to rest and recharge was as critical as food and water and it wasn’t something we had to earn by being good enough. That was life changing for me. Thank you for letting us peek into your garden. 🙂
In a lot of ways you remind me of one of my Uncle’s. Every Spring he plants a large garden. He loves to go out and spend time there. We call it “puttering” as in Uncle David has gone outside to putter in his garden again. Now that I’ve hit the big 50 I also love to putter in my garden, though it is much smaller. Thank you for the description of your own experience puttering.
I had a squirrel plant corn in my flower bucket one year, and another year I had a pumpkin in one of my flower beds. I love the surprises.
The metaphor is poignant for me, as husband is unemployed for the first time in 24 years and as the bulk of our income and provider of our health insurance, I am Very Not Ok, and today was particularly bad.
The Silicon Valley startup that bought the company he worked for and eliminated him is being particularly cruel.
My garden is sad, and broken. But I’m trying real goddamn hard to keep it all together.
I even hugged Dr Picard last week (I’m not really losing it, Dr P is my optometrist.)
Thanks, internet dad.
There is a saying that adorns the entrance to my garden:
“Einer der schönsten Wege zu uns selbst führt durch den Garten.” which means in English “One of the most beautiful ways to get to ourselves is through the garden.” I totally agree wird ist.
I too find much healing for my cPTSD and other issues from my garden. It is another world out of time I can drop into where yard waste is eventually transformed into something fertile, a metaphor for what I do with the mental ‘waste’ of my past. It pleases me to give a home to bees and butterflies. I know that if I am not paying attention to my garden that that is an indicator I am not paying attention to myself. It has become a reflection of me. I’m glad you have a garden to nurture, protect, and putter in.
I live in NY but have a nice size backyard. I’ve tried so many times to grow things but I have a brown thumb. You could totally have fun here. I on the other hand would look at it and kill it
I’ve always loved gardens, and a garden as a metaphor has always attracted me. But I care less about what kind of plants I grow than I do about the fact that they grow. Sure, flowers are pretty, and I’m told they smell nice, and there are plants we can eat, but to me the most important thing is the growth and the natural beauty of it all. And I guess that, too, works as a metaphor. Like, I don’t care what you are, as long as you grow as a person and fill the world with beauty.
Side note: You can plant popcorn and when it sprouts it looks like grass at first. This is because corn was bred from grass. But in the case of popcorn, it’s not edible unless you pop it. The kernels are encased in some kind of mithril armor.
Ah Wil, how shamanic of you! I remember long ago when I thank you for the outstanding job you did durig the STNG episode where you were on the planet with your Native America Guide who was helping with your medicine journey. Here we are, years later you are doing great work for so many! From one traveler to another, Kirimaku!
So nice to see you writing here again. You touch us even when you think you have nothing much to say.
Two of my favorite pop punk bands currently use gardens as metaphors on both of their last albums, in similar ways despite different angles on it. The Wonder Years, on “You’re the Reason I Don’t Want the World To End” sing “Put the work in, plant a garden, try to stay afloat”, a gorgeous song about the singer’s struggles with suicidal ideation and how his kids help him with those feelings.
In contrast are Spanish Love Songs who, on the song “Clean Up Crew”, sing “So fuck the garden and the yard, we can barely tend to our own dreams” – the funny thing is that the singers of both bands are friends and since the Wonder Years’ album was out first, the singer from SLS emailed the lyrics to him and asked if it waa cool and they had a good laugh over their own takes on the concept of gardens in their journeys. They are both whip-smart lyricists which is probably why I like both bands so much, having grown up on the same music as you, Wil.
I’m always looking for new music. I’ll check them out!
That’s a deep metaphor that resonates with me, as well, on multiple levels. Having been diagnosed as an adult with dysthymia (persistent depression) and ADHD, I look back on so many chapters of my life and wonder how they could have been different with an earlier diagnosis. But I’d be a different person now, and I might never have met my husband if late high school and early college had gone a bit more to plan.
I’m going to be thinking hard about this metaphor for a while… possibly while I’m outside weeding and pruning.
Hey, this seems like a good place to drop a discord invite https://discord.gg/27ugRza5
Thank you so much for this — this really resonates with me and I really needed to hear it today. I’m 43 and have been on a journey of self discovery for the last several years. I’m trying to be gentle with myself, to apply the practice of ahimsa — non-violence, causing no harm.
My teens and twenties were a shit show of dysfunction, codependency and abuse…so many bad choices were made and I was ashamed of myself for all of them.
Now, I can look back and know that I had undiagnosed ADHD and that I was an empath surrounded by narcissistic energy vampires. I’m in a good place now, and I wouldn’t have my children if I would have taken any other path. I’m trying to send loving kindness to my past self as well as to the person I am today.
I highly recommend the book “The Empath’s Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People” by Judith Orloff. It honestly changed my life and the way I look at myself. (Empaths are one of many things that ST:TNG got right — there were so many reasons I was completely obsessed with that world as a child!)
Oh, this is lovely, and learning to slow down is so, so hard…
I have always found gardening to be extremely relaxing. I love nothing more than setting out my garden mat (I’m ancient now, so I need something to rest on) and get my 80’s/90’s playlist going, a good pair of shears, a two-pronged weed ripper (hand held) and lots of homemade mulch. I have about 12 flower beds in my yard. My goal is to eliminate grass and just have flowers. I breed my own daylilies and iris, so I have TONS of them. The satisfaction of just ripping out those weeds, the tall wild grasses, bindweed, burdock, various thistles. It’s so therapeutic. I hope the tons of rain we got here in Iowa this spring means I’ll have stuff growing, instead of the drought of the last several years.
I’ve always found it funny that each summer, my gardening seems to expand: first some raised beds, then tending my garden and my son’s school’s garden, then getting another garden plot at work, and this year I’m using another garden space in my backyard, building up the soil and planting more stuff. I told myself years ago “you just can’t help being a nurturer,” even when my life was so full of stress. I don’t know if I saw this as another stressor but also “growing plants is good,” or just “I need to get outside more and this is how I do it.” Gardening is part of self-care for me: making sure I get sunlight on a regular basis, get away from all screens, smell the earth and the green things (tomato, rosemary, roses), and minimize my head-noise. Oh my lord, the mental load…
I’m glad you have your garden. Enjoy the season. I’ll try to be more conscious of the slowing down, as well.